It used to be that marketing was a publishing function that came at the end of long production pipeline—but no longer! In a noisy publishing environment where millions of titles and authors are competing for limited consumer attention, traditional marketing techniques have limited value for all but the biggest authors. What can the savvy author do? Join our expert panel as they discuss emerging trends in marketing and discovery that rewrite the marketing rulebook, as well as the continuing industry challenges of building audience in the age of content abundance.

Kristen McLean

Bookigee

Kristen McLean is the Founder and CEO of Bookigee, a Miami-based start-up that develops ground-breaking products and services that flatten the publishing marketplace. Their first product, WriterCube, A DIY Marketing and Analytics app for Authors is currently in free beta. (www.writercube.com)

Before founding Bookigee, Kristen spent seventeen years in a wide variety of industry roles including her most-recent position as the Executive Director of the Association of Booksellers for Children (ABC), a non-profit trade association that networks the children’s book market. Under Kristen’s leadership, ABC merged with its larger sister association, the American Booksellers Association (ABA) in 2011, where its work continues.

As part of her role as an industry futurist, Kristen lectures nationally and internationally on issues facing the publishing world at venues such as Book Expo America (BEA), Digital Book World (DBW),The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI), The American Library Association (ALA), and The Digital Publishing Conference of the City College of London, UK.

Kristen also edits Bowker Pubtrack’s bi-annual consumer study of the children’s book market, Understanding the Children’s Book Consumer in the Digital Age. Kristen is deeply interested in the confluence of emerging consumer behavior, technology, and publishing in the 21st Century. Find out more at www.kristenmclean.org.

Cevin Bryerman

Publishers Weekly

Cevin Bryerman is the publisher and vice president of Publishers Weekly, the international news magazine of the book publishing industry. For more than 25 years, he has been in the magazine publishing business, working at the helm of both trade and consumer magazines in strategic planning, business development and strategic partnerships. Early on, he started at Dun & Bradstreet for a brief stint in finance before moving on to Whitney Communications’ Boating Industry and Waterway Guides. From there he went to Cahners, where he first worked on Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and School Library Journal. When Cahners was acquired by Reed Elsevier, he took on a host of additional trade and consumer magazines, including Variety, Modern Bride, American Baby and others. After Reed sold Publishers Weekly to its current owner, Bryerman assumed the role of publisher and VP.

Bryerman grew up in Long Island and earned his Bachelor of Science degree in accounting and finance at the State University of New York at Binghamton, home of one of the country’s top schools of management. As a leader within the publishing industry, his innate talent, he believes, is working with people. Book people, he believes, offer a perspective of the world he probably wouldn’t have had otherwise. Admittedly, he wasn’t a reader when he was a kid, but books, he says, have opened up his world. Working at Publishers Weekly has also allowed him to travel the world, from the UAE to Hong Kong to India. A consummate networker, he makes friends wherever he goes.

He is in high demand as a speaker and has given lectures and seminars at numerous universities and institutions, including the University of Michigan and Northwestern School of Journalism, as well as serving on industry committees, most notably the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA). As a member of the board of directors of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, Bryerman is active in the annual Books for a Better Life fundraising event.

When he’s not traveling or off to meetings, Bryerman can be found reading the news on his iPad or curled up with a good hardcover book of nonfiction.

Amanda Havard

Immersedition

Amanda Havard thinks in stories. She writes books and songs, tells stories to people over coffee or in elaborate iPad apps, in short films or subtle photographs. Stories are her life. She is the author of the supernatural young adult series, The Survivors, a transmedia franchise with an online following of 4.5 million readers that is an amalgamation of all of her storytelling love combined. With two novels in the series currently available, the third installment of the series, The Survivors: Body & Blood, is set for release Summer 2013. Originally from Dallas, Texas, she now lives in Nashville, Tennessee, a place where creativity drips from the sap of the trees, radiates from the attitude of the population, and seeps from the concrete. She is a pioneer of the future of storytelling. The inventor of the ImmerseditionTM, patent-pending interactive book, an app that reinvents the reading experience, Havard is always looking for the next best story — and the most innovative way to tell it.

Elizabeth Keenan

Penguin Group

Elizabeth Keenan has been in book publishing for thirteen years beginning at Free Press and then Penguin Group USA. She is currently the publicity director for two imprints there; Hudson Street Press and Plume books. During her career she has worked with many wonderful writers including Ann Rule, Larry Brown, David Benioff, Jane Green, Judy Shepard, Danica McKellar, Lev Grossman, Anne Rice, and many others.

Liz is also a published writer whose work has appeared in a regular column for three years from 2002-2005 in the NY Inquirer and in an anthology in ‘Living on the Edge of The World’ (Touchstone-Fireside). She is also workshop leader for NY Writers Coalition where she has led weekly writer’s workshops for various communities in the NY area, most recently for a group of formerly incarcerated women in a drug & alcohol treatment center in Bedford-Stuyvesant, NY.

Mark Lefebvre

Kobo Inc

Mark Leslie Lefebvre’s passion for writing and love of reading led him to the book industry, where he has worked since 1992 as a bookseller in virtually every possible bookstore environment (mall store, chain store, big box store, online bookstore and campus bookstore). 1992 was the same year Mark sold his first short story, and his most recent books (under the name Mark Leslie) include Haunted Hamilton and Tesseracts Sixteen: Parnassus Unbound. Mark is the Director of Self-Publishing & Author Relations at Kobo where he was part of the team that launched Kobo Writing Life, a DIY self-publishing portal for authors and small publishers. He sits on the Canadian Booksellers Association executive board as well as the BookNet Canada Board of Directors. An author, bookseller, editor and avid reader, he considers the term “Book Nerd” an apt description.

Tarah Theoret

NetGalley LLC

Tarah Theoret is the Reader Concierge at NetGalley, where she works with their ever-expanding community of professional readers (reviewers, bloggers, librarians, booksellers, media professionals, and educators). This involves handling daily support issues, connecting readers to titles of interest, and interacting with readers on social media platforms.

Before joining NetGalley, Tarah worked in marketing at Penguin Young Readers Group where she worked on many YA and Middle Grade campaigns that included talented authors such as John Green, Heather Brewer, John Grisham, Richelle Mead, and John Flanagan amongst many others. Tarah began her career at HarperCollins Publishers while working in marketing, editorial, publicity, sales, and rights. She earned her MS in Publishing from Pace University.